Mickey Walker-April 18, 2010
When one diverges into thinking of the end of one’s days, he
ventures into a forbidden zone. Society, for all its ties, napkins, and manners, frowns upon it, and a discussion
of death and the darkness beyond is much too much, I suppose, for the civilized
mind to comprehend, to even entertain as a reality. But it is real, and we know that we all must perish and die
someday, and choose to put it off until the bitter end, which in many cases,
proves to be too late.
I sigh at thinking of all the premature endings of lives of
our American troops in Iraq and the cost of human life and suffering because of
a bunch of drawings Colin Powell showed us right after we were enraged at the
terrorists for bringing down the Twin Towers and hitting the Pentagon with
planes as weapons. I think of all
the 100s of thousands of Iraqis who have perished in the last several years,
who never saw it coming, this bringing of American democracy to their
country. Perhaps the end would
have been better than living under Saddam Hussein and his cruel rule, but one
thing is certain: we shifted our
reasons for our moral deviation in attacking Iraq, a country who never hurt the
United States. We removed Saddam
Hussein who was never in cahoots with bin Laden in the first place, and we
invited the terrorists to run wild in Iraq.
I have found that pondering the end of time for living here
on this fine kettle of fish of a planet, I can quickly, abruptly and soberly
adjust my perspective on the whole dark affair. Funniest thing, but positive thoughts begin to pour into my
consciousness, things that make me smile, things that make me ponder why I did
not eat more of a particular chocolate, be nicer to friends and less
judgmental, nay, I wonder why I ever judged anything at all. But I have, and these malformed
persons, automobiles, children, neighbors, and TV evangelists all came within
the circle of my crosshairs, and I judged them, criticized them, and left them
to a fate they deserved in the dirt they were born for. At least in my mind I judged scores of
humans and the behavior they exuded, and especially I judged those who were
self-righteous and pompous asses. But I guess the hardest judgment I made was upon myself. Until I realized how stupid it was of
me to judge. People were not of
folly as much as they were ruled by genes and beliefs they embraced for some reason
born out of times long ago. How
could anyone be held responsible for such human traits?
I found it easy to watch a television program and to make
fun of those talk show personages who called themselves human beings, and my
ridicule flew like arrows at the Battle of Wounded Knee. I was superior, at least to my own way
of thinking which I judged to be the right way to think. (Sigh) The end of days perspective and thinking creeps in and
rebukes me every time. This year I
will reach the age of 70 if I can make it until June. So what if I died of a heart attack tomorrow? Would I, like the hero in the great
film, American Beauty, remember all the wonderful, loveliness of a bright sunny
fall day? Would I think fondly on
all the friends and family I have known all these years, and wish for another
chance to do up a better Mickey for them? I mean, as little influence as I might have had on others or
any particular person, could I have resisted the temptation to judge and to act
superior, even to myself, my one-man audience of me, myself, and I? Would all my judgments melt into the
millions of collective smiles I have known since the beginning of time for me
in Rosebud, Texas? Would I have
given them a better companion or friend than I did during the first 70 years? I think so. Truly. I think
so. Because at the end of days I
would want to.
I met a man waiting in line today at the Comcast office
where a line of 14 customers stood patiently awaiting cable service
business. I had a cable box under
my arm that the phone technical support lady had told me was no good, to turn
it in, plug in a new one and see if it did not solve my problems. I did, and it did. But the man was a curious sort. His smile was a pleasant one, he was
born about the same time I was, and he had strong opinions about the horror of
today’s liberals in government. I resisted
the temptation to challenge him, just to see what he thought and why. He said that even Giuliani, Huckabee,
and McCain had been too liberal for him during the last presidential campaign. Of course he hated Obama. Glen Beck was his favorite American on
the TV, can you doubt it? I tried
not to judge this man, and I tried to let him talk.
He thought Bush’s War had been a good thing all along, and
the money was being well-spent, but the liberal Democrats kept on screwing up
our economy by their endless ear marks for pork. He hated to see Obama winding down the war in Iraq. Finally, my propensity to judge escaped
and I said, I thought the Wars Bush started did us no good, and did he think
that maybe we the people would be hard pressed to pay for the mortgage meltdown
bailouts and the AIG failures? He
blamed the people for taking out the loans, and said that without Bush’s Wars,
we would have been attacked again, here at home. He allowed that Obama was weak and would have the terrorists
upon us again in a New York minute.
Now I didn’t say it was possible for me not to judge, but I
was trying hard. How could this
man, born the same time I was, be so pro-government spending when it came to
holy wars against Muslims and blaming the Democrats for spending too much money
while lauding Bush for his tax cuts for the rich and his wars for the benefit
Halliburton and Blackwater, not to mention the rake-off’s Poppy gets with his
friends the Saudis and the Carlisle Group. I did not blast him or call him down. I pitied him while I waited to be
called up next. And I pitied
myself for not being in resonance with a fellow human who believed hard and
with righteous convictions. Whether I succeeded in anything or not, I felt better for not having
challenged him and even to lay judgment on him in my private world if I could
help it. Who says I am right,
anyhow?
My later years proved to be a time of mass judgments toward
others, and I truly am happy, for the most part that I did so. I think doing so did a lot to keep away
from me and those I believe to be not of the light, the people of the lie, as
M. Scott Peck calls them in his book by that same name. But for the most part, I took to not
dealing with much of anything or anybody. And that, I confess, did put a few little scars on my soul.
But Lordy, I sure did give the animals hell, the last couple
of years. I judged animals, can
you believe it? Here the Creator
makes them and I judged those that were worth something to man and those that
were not. Can you imagine a more
superior, arrogant position than that? I realized what I had become, and I had to amend some of my ways, I was
certain. You see, there’s always justification
for judging animals, just before shooting them or trapping them. I have a cedar two-story house, and I
live in a pristine forest that has not been altered much in the last thousand
years. There are squirrels, hawks,
armadillos, raccoons, and last year, three deer came to drink from the little
creek that has run by my house from the time Santa Ana and his Mexican Army of
1836 marched down the same path that now was my driveway. It was part of the Old Spanish
trail. So these squirrels began eating
my house. Early in the
morning. So I would go out and see
what damage they inflicted on the cedar siding, and it was big damage, big
holes. After a 2-month vacation,
we returned to find that one of the 1x4 vertical corner boards, some 25 feet
high, had been eaten totally in half, as if a beaver had had lunch on the
house. Made me livid. So how do you handle squirrel
problems? I was soft on them at
first, but I judged them to be an annoyance and a destructive critter who may
have to be dealt with even if it meant that I would give them a death sentence
with my high-powered pellet rifle.
What happens in Part II is typically human and mercenary,
and I will attempt to judge myself harshly but fairly by what ensued. The parallel is much the same as when
Bush determined that because he had the power, he needed to snuff out as many
undesirable humans (the terrorists in Iraq at the time of 911 which were nil)
and he hit some innocent Iraqi women, men, and children, instead. I will show that my war on the
squirrels was just another act of madness against a creature that had as much
right to the forest and land as I did, yet were deemed ‘undesirable’ by a human
with super powers of squirrel destruction as well as the moral inclination to
judge them as a species, which, in that God made them, has me walking on thin
ice in these the prologue to the end of days for this ancient human reporter.